evalynwrites
Member
At least they aren't being bred?
"Dire wolves" are now a real thing
- Thread starter DavidBrown
- Start date
I have it on good authority that dire wolves can be found on Skinwalker Ranch,
depending on what portals are open.
depending on what portals are open.
The same company are interested in reviving the Thylacine, Wooly Mammoth and Dodo.
Their efforts to bring back the Thylacine involve modifying via gene editing the Fat-tailed Dunnart (which is hardly a suitable surrogate).
Thylacine | Tasmanian Wolf |Tasmanian Tiger - Colossal
A discussion on this can be found here:
If you dunnart know they were bringing back the thylacine
Their efforts to bring back the Thylacine involve modifying via gene editing the Fat-tailed Dunnart (which is hardly a suitable surrogate).
Thylacine | Tasmanian Wolf |Tasmanian Tiger - Colossal
A discussion on this can be found here:
If you dunnart know they were bringing back the thylacine
We're claiming charactistic vocalisations for a long-extinct species? Pretty sure there's no basis for it in this case.
This sounds a lot like white tiger situation to me - the white coat starts coming at the cost of problems. Do we even have proof the Dire Wolf was normally white?
Having the nerve to call these dire wolves is something, a dash of gene tinkering still means it is 100% Gray Wolf, end of question. Nothing was added, you just made them look a little different. We can make a Zebra Danio glow bright pink but it's still a Zebra Danio.
Also what are you going to do with a bunch of large DNA-meddled wolves? Nobody's gonna want those released anywhere, and if they were ten to one they mess up the local wolf genes. Sounds like a colossal waste of time and effort to me.
Having been to Twitter and Reddit, the discussion regarding appears to be twofold with one side being the one I agree with. The first one, Colossal insists on calling these pups Dire Wolves. And guess what? The general public takes it at face value and spread the news like wildfire. No need to dig further. Colossal has accomplished that so well and their responses on Reddit have left much to be desired to say the least. The second fold, people who did a bit more digging and rightfully calling them out on their Dire Wolves claim. There is no Dire Wolf genes added, rather tweaking of some.
It bothers me greatly the need for Colossal to be this outright ignorant about what’s going on. Their responses vary but generally have said they are only merely calling these pups Dire Wolves solely based on appearance. That doesn’t sit well for me. Their PR and marketing teams must be popping their champagne bottles for the hype created. Even with the few biologists I’ve seen on social media refute the claims made by Colossal and Times magazine, the damage is done and the general public ate it up while begging for seconds.
It bothers me greatly the need for Colossal to be this outright ignorant about what’s going on. Their responses vary but generally have said they are only merely calling these pups Dire Wolves solely based on appearance. That doesn’t sit well for me. Their PR and marketing teams must be popping their champagne bottles for the hype created. Even with the few biologists I’ve seen on social media refute the claims made by Colossal and Times magazine, the damage is done and the general public ate it up while begging for seconds.
They're also claiming that these animals are Dire Wolves solely based on appearance - for an animal we've never seen other than bones and have no images of. They also claim that these animals exhibit "characteristic vocalizations" - we have even less idea of what Dire Wolf vocalizations may have been.
I didn't exactly have a good view of Colossal before this, but honestly I've lost any sliver of respect I have for them at this point.
I didn't exactly have a good view of Colossal before this, but honestly I've lost any sliver of respect I have for them at this point.
The_Leopard_Seal
Well-Known Member
Colossal is a sham. And resources would be better spent on trying to preserve living species than trying to bring back extinct species.
Lafone
Well-Known Member
Their PR machine and investment model needs people to be curious but there’s really no such thing as ‘de extinction’ for this company and they haven’t brought back any stuff in the first place.
Randomname0183
Well-Known Member
As far as I've read (and seen them represented in palaeoart) I believe direwolves were not even likely white to begin with, and instead more likely a reddish shade like, say, a red wolf (however, the bones were apparently sourced from Idaho and such, which would have been frozen over, and they also claim the gene for the fur coat in dire wolves would cause blindness in wolves ,o they made them white to circumvent it.
I wouldn't have thought they would have massive ears like these do either, everything I've read points to them very vaguely looking like wolves. If anything these look like they took Game of Thrones for reference, probably due to their cultural advisor being George R R Martin, take from that what you will.
Honestly, if colossal wants to use all that money put it into some more feasible recent extinct animals such as Northern White Rhinos or the Pyrenean Ibex. Putting it into animals who's natural ecosystems are long gone or permanently altered, or those with no feasible genetically close surrogates is a tremendous waste of time and resources to create a CRISPR modified wolf.
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Dr. Loxodonta
Well-Known Member
They aren’t done either, “Colossal has made three dire wolves so far and plans to make a total of seven or eight” according to an interview Colossal CEO Ben Lamm.
Scientists Claim to Have Brought Back the Dire Wolf
The company, which recently unveiled a “woolly mouse,” has raised $435 million and says it is now worth $10.2 billion. Just imagine what that could do to conservation, it would be revolutionary. If people would wake up to the real world and stop thinking about their backyard Jurassic Park projects, the change in animal population management would be exponential.
Scientists Claim to Have Brought Back the Dire Wolf
The company, which recently unveiled a “woolly mouse,” has raised $435 million and says it is now worth $10.2 billion. Just imagine what that could do to conservation, it would be revolutionary. If people would wake up to the real world and stop thinking about their backyard Jurassic Park projects, the change in animal population management would be exponential.
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Give it a decade and they'll be passing off a stripey Tasmanian devil as a Thylacine...
If that’s the case I will miss the days when people confused pademelons for thylacines.
Sorry for the double post, but I could definitely see Vantara “rescuing” them.
Kharzo
Well-Known Member
Can't wait for Forrests video!!
They haven't done one yet, and have blatantly lied that they are capable of de-extinction. What makes you think they are capable of doing it?
This situation reminds me of what was with the Rau Quagga.
Beginning in the 1990s, a game reserve owner in South Africa found that the extinct quagga and extant plains zebra are closer genetically than was once thought - that is, very close - and so had the idea of selectively breeding zebras which would be phenotypically - and to some extent genetically - similar to the quagga. And so came, the 'Rau's Quagga'.
And so the question immediately is, if your zebra looks like a quagga, does that make it a quagga? And I think from a genetic level, the answer is 'close enough but no' - like it is very close genetically, but the quagga had certain genetic differences not present in these phenotypically similar animals. And so the name 'Rau Quagga' is used to refer to this animals, which whilst phenotypically similar, are certainly different. They are not the quagga of old, but a 'quagga' in decently-sized quotation marks. They are certainly zebras. And as far as many of this forum are considered they don't consider them 'quagga' at all for what it's worth.
And so this problem is one extrapolated to wildly new levels when the animal has been extinct not for the odd century but millions of years, and the animal you're genetically modifying is on a distant branch of the evolutionary tree it shares with this extinct animal! What I wish I could see more of is Colossal stating that these are 'neo-dire wolves', or these are grey wolves with phenotypic similarities to dire wolves... some degree of honesty!
Beginning in the 1990s, a game reserve owner in South Africa found that the extinct quagga and extant plains zebra are closer genetically than was once thought - that is, very close - and so had the idea of selectively breeding zebras which would be phenotypically - and to some extent genetically - similar to the quagga. And so came, the 'Rau's Quagga'.
And so the question immediately is, if your zebra looks like a quagga, does that make it a quagga? And I think from a genetic level, the answer is 'close enough but no' - like it is very close genetically, but the quagga had certain genetic differences not present in these phenotypically similar animals. And so the name 'Rau Quagga' is used to refer to this animals, which whilst phenotypically similar, are certainly different. They are not the quagga of old, but a 'quagga' in decently-sized quotation marks. They are certainly zebras. And as far as many of this forum are considered they don't consider them 'quagga' at all for what it's worth.
And so this problem is one extrapolated to wildly new levels when the animal has been extinct not for the odd century but millions of years, and the animal you're genetically modifying is on a distant branch of the evolutionary tree it shares with this extinct animal! What I wish I could see more of is Colossal stating that these are 'neo-dire wolves', or these are grey wolves with phenotypic similarities to dire wolves... some degree of honesty!
Lafone
Well-Known Member
Agreed and I know they are 'only mice' but the unnecessary experimentation involved in this stuff as well as getting dogs to be surrogates and putting them through caesareans which are completely unnecessary, just makes you wonder how exploitative and abusive their treatment of the animals they are experimenting on actually is. What happens to the elephants they muck about with to carry their woolly mammoth playthings when they get that far. Doesn't bear thinking about. It's wrong on so many levels and such a waste of money.
Kharzo
Well-Known Member
Well, for Colossal, this passes as a thylacine, so everything's possible.
Colossal on Instagram: " (Yes, it’s AI. No, there aren’t modern photos of Thylacines.)"
BBC article talks to scientists from the 'it's not a Dire Wolf' camp
Experts dispute Colossal claim dire wolf back from extinction
Experts dispute Colossal claim dire wolf back from extinction